# The Baha'i Faith in Iran

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: John Walbridge, The Baha'i Faith in Iran, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> The Bahá'í Faith in Iran
> 
> John Walbridge
> published in Essays and Notes on Babi and Bahá'í History
> 
> 2002
> 
> Three Clerics and a Prince of Isfahan: background to Bahá'u'lláh's Epistle
> to the Son of the Wolf
> 
> Among the defining events in the
> development of the Bahá'í community of Iran in the time of Bahaullah was the
> judicial murder of two wealthy and prominent Bahá'í merchants in Isfahan early
> in 1879, the result of an extortion plot that got out of hand. Members of the respected Nahri family, the
> two brothers were entitled by Bahaullah "the King and Beloved of Martyrs." The incident itself is well known. The following sections discuss the Tablet
> that Bahaullah wrote in immediate reaction to the murders and four prominent
> opponents of the Bahá'í Faith in Isfahan: three clerics and a prince-governor.
> 
> Note: On the event see
> Balyuzi, Eminent 33–44. Ishraq-Khavari, Nurayn, is an account of the incident with biographies of the
> brothers. For contemporary foreign
> accounts see Momen, Babi 274-77.
> 
> Lawh-i Burhan
> 
> The Tablet of the Proof
> was revealed in 1879 as a rebuke to the two clerics—the "Wolf" and the
> "She-Serpent"—responsible for the martyrdoms of the King and Beloved of
> Martyrs in Isfahan. The Imam-Jum`a of
> the city, Mir Muhammad-Husayn Khatunabadi, had owed the brothers a large sum of
> money. It was generally thought that
> their arrest as Bahá'ís was a pretext to void this debt and allow the governor,
> the Imam-Jum`a, and Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir Isfahani, another leading cleric, to
> seize and divide the brothers' extensive properties. Though the governor had received orders to send the two brothers
> to Tehran where they would most likely have been released, the two clerics were
> able to force him to permit their executions.
> 
> The killing of the two brothers—members of
> a prominent merchant family in Isfahan and among the leading Bahá'ís in
> Iran—shocked and angered the Bahá'ís and their many friends, both Iranian and
> European. Bahaullah immediately wrote
> the letter known as the Lawh-i Burhan sharply rebuking the two clergymen. It reached Tehran only thirty-eight days
> after the killings. Mirza Abu al-Fadl
> Gulpaygani, on Bahaullah's instructions, sent a copy of the letter to each of
> the clergymen. There is no record of
> their reactions.
> 
> The principal theme of the Lawh-i Burhan is
> contrast between the pretensions of the two clergymen to be exponents of the
> Law and faith of Islam and the injustice and cruelty of their killing two
> descendants of the Prophet himself. Most of the tablet is addressed to Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir, the more
> influential of the two. Bahaullah
> denounces the injustice of sentencing the two brothers to death. Bahaullah says that there is no hatred in
> his own heart for the Shaykh, who has been deceived by his own folly. Had he realized what he had done, he would
> have cast himself into the fire.
> 
> Bahaullah compares the Shaykh to the Jewish
> priests who condemned Christ to death and to the leaders of the cult of idols
> in Mecca who opposed Muhammad. They
> could offer no proof to justify their actions, nor could the Shaykh for
> his. (This is the source of the title
> of the tablet.) In fact, the Shaykh
> followed his passions, not his Lord, and abandoned the Law of God—the knowledge
> of which is the source of the authority of the Muslim clergy—and followed the
> law of his lower self. True learning is
> to recognize the station of Bahaullah. If the Shaykh were to subdue his passions, he would understand the call
> of Bahaullah and his sins would be forgiven. Bahaullah and his followers, as their actions testified, had no fear of
> the Shaykh's cruelty.
> 
> Bahaullah says that leadership had made the
> Shaykh proud. But there is no honor in
> being followed by the worthless and ignorant: it was such people who supported
> the priests who put Christ to death. Bahaullah refers here to three of his own works: tablets to the Sultan
> and Napoleon III and the Kitab-i Iqan.
> 
> Bahaullah digresses to address the Muslim
> clergy in general, warning them that neither their wealth nor the religious
> sciences in which they prided themselves would profit them. The Shah, Bahaullah implied, feared to
> interfere with wolves such as the Shaykh. But the Shaykh is like the last sunlight on the mountaintop, soon to
> fade away like those who had opposed God in the past. Truly, Muhammad and Fatima the Chaste wept at his deeds. The Muslim clergy had opposed everyone who
> had tried to improve the condition of Islam. Bahaullah points as a warning to the disastrous war of 1877 in which Turkey
> had lost much of her territory in the Balkans.
> 
> Now Bahaullah turns from the "Wolf" to the
> "She-Serpent"—Mir Muhammad-Husayn, the Imam-Jum`a. His denunciation of this man is even sharper
> than that of the Shaykh. There is no
> hint that this man deceived himself about the injustice of his actions. Soon, Bahaullah promises, "the breaths of
> chastisement will seize thee. . . " He
> will not, Bahaullah prophesies, consume the wealth that he had pillaged.
> 
> When Edward Browne visited Isfahan a few
> years after the martyrdoms, he heard of "the terrible letter" threatening the
> two clergymen with divine chastisement. Most likely it immediately began circulating in manuscript among the
> Bahá'ís. It would have been convincing,
> for its prophecies of disgrace and death for the two clergymen were soon
> fulfilled. It was published in at least
> two early collections of the writings of Bahaullah, Aqdas-i Buzurg (1314/1896) 200–208 and Majmu`a (Cairo, 1920)
> 53–66. Bahaullah Himself quotes lengthy
> passages in Epistle to the Son of the
> Wolf—itself addressed to Aqa Najafi, the son of Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir: pp.
> 79–86, 97–103. The entire text is
> included in the Arabic and English editions of Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, Sect. 14. Almost the entire text of the tablet was
> translated by Shoghi Effendi in Bahaullah's Epistle
> to the Son of the Wolf..
> 
> Bahaullah, Epistle, refers to the tablet as "Lawh-i Burhan." It is also known as "Lawh-i Raqsha'"
> ("Tablet of the She-Serpent").
> 
> Note: For text and
> translation see Bahaullah, Tablets,,
> sect. 14. Taherzadeh 4:91–102. Ishraq-Khavari, Ganj 145–46. Balyuzi, Bahá'u'lláh 382. Mazandarani, Asrar 2:40–41. Ishraq-Khavari, Da'irat
> 13:2021, 2057. Ishraq-Khavari, Nurayn 245–53.
> 
> Mir Muhammad-Husayn Khatunabadi, "the She-Serpent"
> 
> The cleric known in Bahá'í tradition as
> "the She-Serpent" (Raqsha') was the Imam-Jum`a of Isfahan and one of those
> responsible for the execution in 1879 of the Nahri brothers, the "King" and
> "Beloved of Martyrs." The Khatunabadis
> were the descendants of Mir Muhammad-Salih, a distinguished scholar of the
> early eighteenth century, and had held the position of Imam-Jum`ah of Isfahan
> for about a century. Mir
> Muhammad-Husayn was the brother of Mir Sayyid Muhammad Sultan al-`Ulama', the
> Bab's host in Isfahan in 1846. On his
> brother's death in 1874, he inherited the family office, thus making him one of
> the two or three highest ranked clergy in the city. (The Imam-Jum'ah was the leader of Friday prayers at the most
> important mosque in the city. The
> holders of this office were, at least nominally, appointed by the government,
> although often the office was effectively hereditary.) He does not seem to have lent any particular
> distinction to his office.
> 
> Mir Muhammad-Husayn's earliest contact with
> the Babis was when his brother sent him out of the city to meet the Bab, who
> was coming from Shiraz. Since the Bab
> stayed for some time in his brother's house, Mir Muhammad-Husayn must have met
> him a number of times.
> 
> Mir Muhammad-Husayn's importance in Bahá'í
> history arises from the curious fact that his bankers were Bahá'ís: the three
> Nahri brothers, a family of wealthy merchants who had become Babis at the time
> of the Bab's visits and who were now among the most important and well-known
> Bahá'ís of Iran. They would routinely
> pay the Imam-Jum`a's debts as they came in. The account eventually reached the very large sum of 18,000 tomans. In early 1879 the brothers presented this
> bill for payment. Mir Muhammad-Husayn
> stalled, asking for an audit. Shaykh
> Muhammad-Baqir, the most powerful cleric in Isfahan and a bitter opponent of
> the Bahá'ís—proposed that the three Nahri brothers, well-known as Bahá'ís—be
> arrested as heretics. Their property
> would then be forfeit and could be divided among the two clerics and the
> governor, whose cooperation would be necessary. The three brothers were arrested, two of them while guests in the
> Imam-Jum`a's house. The youngest
> recanted and was released. The two
> older brothers refused and were eventually executed at the insistence of the
> clergy. Mir Muhammad-Husayn and Shaykh
> Muhammad-Baqir personally delivered the death warrants to the prison.
> 
> After the executions of the two brothers,
> the Imam-Jum`a sent his servants to seize their property and loot their houses,
> many of their possessions being extremely valuable. A few days later a dispute broke out between him and Zill
> al-Sultan, the governor. Several weeks
> later Mir Muhammad-Husayn tried to force the issue by marching on the
> governorate with his supporters to demand a larger share of the plunder. When disorders continued, troops were sent
> from Tehran, the Imam-Jum`a was exiled to Mashhad, and his property was
> plundered. He was allowed to return
> from his exile in Mashhad a year or so later. He died in Isfahan two years after his victims on 21 June 1881 of a
> repulsive tumor on his neck. He was
> buried in an unmarked grave by a few porters, no one else daring to risk the
> anger of the governor by attending his funeral. When the merchants closed the bazaar to mourn his death, the
> governor's attendants forced them to reopen their shops.
> 
> Bahá'í tradition reports that when someone
> expressed doubts about the wisdom of killing the Nahri brothers, he had said,
> "Their blood be on my neck." Thus his
> gruesome death was interpreted as a punishment of his crime and the fulfillment
> of Bahaullah's prophecy of his downfall.
> 
> Note: Momen, Babi 271–74. Balyuzi, Eminent
> 33–44. Bahaullah, Tablets, "Lawh-i Burhan" para. 14, pp. 213–16. Taherzadeh 4:73–102. `Abd al-Baha, Makatib 200–1, 232–33. Nabil, 201. Browne, "Babis of Persia,"
> p. 490–91.
> 
> Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir Isfahani, "the Wolf"
> 
> "The Wolf" was a leading mujtahid of
> Isfahan responsible for a number of persecutions of Bahá'ís. He born in 1234/1818–19 and was the son of a
> prominent cleric in Isfahan. His mother
> was the daughter of Ja`far Kashif al-Ghita', one of the most important
> exponents of the Usuli legal school. Muhammad-Baqir went to Najaf, where he studied jurisprudence with the
> two greatest Shi`i legal scholars of the time, Muhammad-Hasan an-Najafi and
> Murtada al-Ansari. Having completed his
> studies, he returned to Isfahan to assume the position of leader of prayers in
> the Royal Mosque. About the same time,
> the old Imam-Jum`a and several other important clerics in Isfahan died,
> abruptly making him the highest-ranking cleric in the city. He acquired many students and great
> religious authority in Isfahan and surrounding regions. He wrote several books, none especially
> important. Most of Shaykh
> Muhammad-Baqir's efforts went into building up his religious, political, and
> economic power. His political position
> was such that he was sometimes able to challenge the governor directly, doing
> such things as inflicting the death penalty against the wishes of the
> authorities. He also acquired great
> wealth, at least partly by hoarding grain in times of famine.
> 
> In 1876 he was forced by the authorities to
> leave Isfahan and retire to Mashhad. He
> then went to Tehran, was reconciled to Zill al-Sultan, the governor, and
> returned to Isfahan on 16 April 1876. In 1883 he fell from grace once more, being forced to leave the city
> after the humiliation of having his wife seduced by the governor. He died in Safar 1301/December 1883, shortly
> after arriving at Najaf.
> 
> Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir had a number of
> children, several of them later prominent clerics in Isfahan. The most important was Muhammad-Taqi, better
> known as Aqa Najafi or to the Bahá'ís "the Son of the Wolf."
> 
> Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir was a relentless foe
> of heresy and waged a twenty-year battle against Shaykhis, Babis, and especially
> Bahá'ís. In 1864, he had several
> hundred Babis of Najafabad arrested and wanted to put them all to death. More moderate clerics prevented this, but
> four were eventually killed—two of whom were under the protection of the
> Shah—and many others beaten and robbed.
> 
> In 1874, shortly before the arrival of Zill
> al-Sultan, the new governor, he instigated a major pogrom against the Bahá'ís
> of Isfahan. About twenty were arrested,
> while hundreds of others took refuge in the office of the British telegraph
> company and the houses of the Europeans in the city. Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir proclaimed from his pulpit that Muslims
> were free to kill Bahá'ís and to do as they wished with their property and
> women. The garrison intervened to
> restore order, and eventually the Shah stopped the persecutions.
> 
> In 1878 a Bahá'í from the village of
> Talkhuncha, Mulla Kazim, was arrested there and delivered into the hands of
> Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir. When he refused
> to recant his faith, he was publicly beheaded in the Maydan-i Shah. His body was abused by the mob. Two other Bahá'ís were also arrested. One was severely beaten and his ears were
> cut off. A number of Bahá'í houses were
> also attacked.
> 
> In March 1879 Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir; Mir
> Muhammad-Husayn, the new Imam-Jum`a; and Zill al-Sultan plotted to kill three
> Bahá'í Nahri brothers. Zill al-Sultan
> tried to withdraw from the conspiracy when he was ordered to send two of the
> brothers to Tehran, but some fifty clergymen, accompanied by their supporters, closed
> the bazaar and marched to the governorate. Zill al-Sultan agreed to endorse a death sentence issued by the
> clergy. Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir and the
> Imam-Jum`a personally supervised the execution.
> 
> After this last incident Bahaullah gave
> Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir the title "Wolf" (Dhi'b) for his cruelty, denouncing him
> in the Lawh-i Burhan ("Tablet of the Proof"). In another tablet (Bahaullah, Athar 2:197–98, evidently written at the
> time of one of the Shaykh's exiles, he prophesies his final complete downfall.
> 
> After the Shaykh's death, his son
> Muhammad-Taqi—better known as Aqa Najafi or the "Son of the Wolf"—assumed
> his place as prayer leader in the Royal Mosque and carried on the crusade
> against the Bahá'ís.
> 
> Note: Amin, A`yan 9:186. Momen, Babi 243, 513,
> 268–74. Balyuzi, Eminent 33–40, 134, 259. Bahaullah, Tablets,
> 203–26. `Abd al-Baha, Makatib 201, 232. Bahaullah, Athar 2:197–98. Brown,
> "Babis of Persia" 491.
> 
> Aqa Najafi, "the Son of the
> Wolf"
> 
> Shaykh Muhammad-Taqi Najafi—usually called
> Aqa Najafi, and entitled by Bahaullah "Son of the Wolf"—was a bitter opponent
> of the Bahá'ís. He was born on 17 Rabi`
> II 1262/14 April 1846, the son of Shaykh Muhammad-Baqir Isfahani, who was the
> leader of prayers at the Royal Mosque in Isfahan. He was related by blood and marriage to many prominent
> `ulama. He studied under his father in
> Isfahan and then went to Najaf where he studied the usual subjects under
> Mirzay-i Shirazi, the highest-ranking Shi`i cleric of the time, and others. Returning to Isfahan, he was associated with
> his father and assumed his father's position in the Royal Mosque on his death
> in 1883. His title "Aqa Najafi"
> stressed his claim to be regarded as one of the Najaf circle of religious
> scholars.
> 
> Building on the wealth and power
> accumulated by his father, Najafi became the most powerful cleric in Isfahan
> and one of the wealthiest men of the city. For over thirty years he waged a bitter struggle for control of Isfahan
> with Zill al-Sultan, the Qajar prince-governor. In the process he accumulated vast wealth, which he distributed
> generously to students and other clerics. The rise of his power in Isfahan was aided by the fall of Zill al-Sultan
> from royal favor in 1888.
> 
> Despite his hatred for the representatives
> of the Qajar dynasty and his early support for the nationalist revolt against
> the tobacco concession in 1891–92, his support for the constitutional
> revolution was ambiguous and inconsistent. He was criticized and mistrusted by many of the constitutionalist
> leaders, some of whom he had denounced as heretics and Babis (which, indeed,
> some were).
> 
> Like his father before him, Aqa Najafi was
> a bitter and ruthless opponent of the Bahá'ís. Najafi was one of the clergy who had signed the death warrant of the two
> Nahri brothers and took an active role in forcing the governor to carry out the
> sentence. After his father's death,
> Najafi assumed the leading role in the persecution of Bahá'ís in central
> Iran. He was largely responsible for
> the persecutions in Sida in 1889, in Najafabad in 1889, 1899, and 1905, and in
> Isfahan and Yazd in 1903. In addition
> to his activities in Isfahan and its vicinity, he wrote to `ulama in other
> cities urging them to persecute the Bahá'ís. He also harassed the Muslims who attended the Christian missionary
> schools and the Jews. Such was Najafi's
> hatred of the Bahá'ís that he is said to have prohibited the recitation of the
> famous Ramadan dawn prayer, traditionally thought to contain the greatest name
> of God, because it contained the name "Baha." Though the leading `ulama in Najaf did not usually openly endorse
> Najafi's pogroms, they did not repudiate him and helped prevent the government
> from acting against him.
> 
> Despite Najafi's thirty-year crusade
> against the Bahá'ís, he is best known among Bahá'ís for the Epistle to the Son
> of the Wolf. Bahaullah's last major
> work, this book is addressed to Aqa Najafi and contains Bahaullah's own summary
> of the history and teachings of his religion. The "Shaykh" addressed throughout the book is Najafi.
> 
> Aqa Najafi had fifteen children by three
> permanent and two temporary wives. Several of his children were of moderate prominence in clerical circles
> in Isfahan, as their descendants are still. Najafi is variously said to have written forty or a hundred books. He published a number of them, but it is
> said that some of these were actually written by others.
> 
> His wealth is also a source of
> controversy. Though a clerical source
> speaks of his generosity, there seems little doubt that much of his wealth was
> ill-gotten. He cooperated with the
> governor to corner the market in wheat during a famine. On one occasion he had an official tortured
> and killed who had complained that Najafi had hoarded hundreds of tons of wheat
> while people starved. He threatened
> revenue officers to avoid paying taxes. The wealthy of Isfahan suspected that the Bahá'ís he attacked were
> chosen for the wealth that might be seized from them, and they feared him, even
> if they were not themselves Bahá'ís.
> 
> Aqa Najafi's character is a matter of
> disagreement. The clerical biographers
> generally praise him. "He was among the
> great scholars and clerics of Isfahan. . . He was almost without peer through
> the centuries in his political skill and ability to deal with the government." (Makarim.)
> 
> He has also been called a murderer, opportunist, hoarder, and plagiarist. He was hated in his day by the government,
> foreign diplomats, and missionaries, and feared above all others by the
> Bahá'ís. His fellow clergy admired him,
> then and now, as a zealous defender of their faith.
> 
> He died 11 Sha`ban 1332/5 July 1914 in
> Isfahan and was buried near the Maydan-i Shah in Isfahan.
> 
> Note: EIr, s.v. "Aqa Najafi." *** Makarim
> 1662–67. Amin, A`yan, 9:196. Momen, Babi
> 
> 280–88, 363, 376–85, 395–96, 426–36, 514. Balyuzi, Eminent 38, 132–33,
> 151-53, 259. Momen, Shi`i 133, 140–41. Algar, Religion
> 16, 102, 128, 173, 180–81, 209, 212, 220, 231–32. Bahaullah, Ishraqat 40. Ishraq-Khavari, Da'irat 1:46,
> 110.
> 
> Sultan-Mas`ud Mirza Zill
> al-Sultan
> 
> Born on 5 Jan. 1850,
> Sultan-Mas`ud Mirza Zill al-Sultan was the eldest
> surviving son of Nasir al-Din Shah and long-time governor of Isfahan. He was passed over for the throne because
> his mother, `Iffat al-Saltana, was a temporary wife and not of noble blood, so
> the next son, Muzaffar al-Din Mirza, was designated heir-apparent. His original title was Yamin al-Dawla, but
> in 1869 he received the title Zill al-Sultan, "shadow of the king."
> 
> He became governor of Mazandaran at age 11
> and of Fars at 13. In 1874 he became
> governor of Isfahan. He ruled sternly,
> suppressed disorders, and paid taxes promptly to the central government. With these commendations, additional
> provinces were added to his government until by 1882 he governed about 40% of
> Iran, including such important areas as Yazd, Fars with its capital of Shiraz,
> and Kirmanshah. In addition, he built
> up an efficient provincial army containing 21,000 men, 6,000 horse, and ten
> batteries of artillery—a force that by Iranian standards was large, well-armed,
> and well-trained. He ruled regally in
> Isfahan, flattering English diplomats who supposed him to be enlightened and
> pro-British.
> 
> This situation abruptly ended in 1888. Nasir al-Din Shah, suspecting that Zill
> al-Sultan planned to contest the throne with his gentler brother on his
> father's death, detained him while he was visiting Tehran and announced that
> Zill al-Sultan had "resigned" all his offices except the governorship of
> Isfahan. His deputy-governors in the
> cities and provinces formerly under his rule were dismissed and the fine army
> disbanded. Zill al-Sultan eventually
> returned to Isfahan, an embittered and much weakened man.
> 
> After the assassination of Nasir al-Din
> Shah, having lost his own power and without the support he had once hoped for
> from the English, he yielded to his younger brother's accession to the
> throne. He remained governor of Isfahan
> for twenty years after his disgrace. These years were dominated by a long struggle for control of Isfahan
> with the powerful and unscrupulous Aqa Najafi. He was finally dismissed from his governorship after the Constitutional
> Revolution and exiled to Europe. He was
> allowed to return during World War I and died not long after his return in
> Isfahan on 2 July 1918.
> 
> Zill al-Sultan's relations with the Bahá'ís
> were complex and ambiguous. On his
> first arrival as governor in Isfahan, he was greeted with a persecution of
> Bahá'ís instigated by Shaykh Muhammd-Baqir. He sought to the prevent the news from reaching Tehran. In 1879 he consented to the arrest of the
> Nahri brothers, the "King' and "Beloved of Martyrs." It seems likely that his interest in the matter was the innocent
> extortion scarcely distinguishable from tax collection and that he did not
> particularly want them killed. Nonetheless, confronted on the one hand with the obstinate refusal of
> the two brothers to recant and on the other by a mob led by sixty clerics, he
> consented to their deaths. In this he
> disobeyed orders from the Shah to send them to Tehran. After their deaths, he took such a large
> share of their plundered wealth that the Imam-Jum`a, cheated in the
> transaction, raised another riot in protest.
> 
> In the various persecutions that took place
> in Isfahan and its vicinity through the rest of his governorship, Zill
> al-Sultan generally played a passive role, pleading his inability to confront
> the clergy, especially the formidable Aqa Najafi. When possible he discouraged the pogroms but rarely took active
> measures to stop them. Zill al-Sultan
> was not himself actively hostile to the Bahá'ís and in any case hated the
> clergy. It is said that Zill al-Sultan
> did instigate the persecution of the Bahá'ís of Yazd in 1891 to divert
> attention from himself after he had been indirectly implicated in a plot
> against the Shah.
> 
> On at least one occasion Zill al-Sultan
> attempted to enlist the Bahá'ís in his schemes to gain the throne for
> himself. He sent a messenger to
> Bahaullah, Haji Muhammad-`Ali Sayyah Mahallati. Bahaullah rejected this overture politely but firmly and later
> remarked to his companions that had he sent Zill al-Sultan's letter to Nasir
> al-Din Shah, it would surely have resulted in the prince's death. In the fall of 1911 Zill al-Sultan
> approached `Abd al-Baha in Paris, hoping for his help in securing his return to
> Iran and reacquiring certain properties of his that had come into the hands of
> Bahá'ís. `Abd al-Baha said that Zill
> al-Sultan would return to Iran and that the property in question would be given
> to him without payment. Discovering
> that one of `Abd al-Baha's attendants was a son of one of the brothers he had
> put to death thirty years before, he muttered excuses. `Abd al-Baha said that he knew the part Zill
> al-Sultan had played and what his motive had been.
> 
> Zill al-Sultan married Hamdam al-Muluk, the
> daughter of Nasir al-Din Shah's sister and Mirza Taqi Khan, the former prime
> minister. His son Jalal al-Dawla was
> governor of Yazd and played a large part in the persecutions of the Bahá'ís
> there.
> 
> Zill al-Sultan tried to portray himself to
> foreigners as a progressive and pro-British reformer. The astute Curzon, however, saw him as driven by the single
> ambition to supplant his brother as heir apparent and believed that he had also
> made overtures to the Russians. In
> fact, although he was a vigorous and in many ways capable ruler, there was much
> less to him than his English admirers saw. His rule was marred by cruelties: persecutions of Bahá'ís, the
> treacherous killing of a Bakhtiyari leader, and persecutions of Jews and
> others, mostly instigated by the clergy but tolerated by the prince. Foreigners were appalled by the damage he
> inflicted to some of the great monuments of Isfahan, though in this he cannot
> be said to have been better or worse than his contemporaries.
> 
> His relations with the Bahá'ís were
> consistently duplicitous. He was
> willing to present himself as sympathetic to the Bahá'ís and even to solicit
> their aid, but he abandoned them when it suited his political purposes.
> 
> Note: Curzon 1:416–21 and
> passim. Browne, Year 114–15. Momen, Babi 268–90, 301–5, 376–85 passim,
> 524. Balyuzi, Eminent 33–44, 79–80. Balyuzi, Bahá'u'lláh 409–10, 431–34. Balyuzi, `Abdu'l-Bahá 161–62. Blomfield, Chosen 186–87. ***Makarim 1814–15.
> 
> Khomeini
> 
> Ayatollah Ruhollah
> Khomeini—properly Imam Ayatu'llah Ruhu'llah al-Musavi al-Kumayni, the leader of
> the Iranian revolution of 1979, was bitterly hostile to the Bahá'ís and
> sanctioned the persecutions that took place under the Islamic revolutionary
> government of Iran.
> 
> Life
> 
> Khomeini was born in about 1900 in the
> impoverished oasis town of Khumayn, south of Tehran. His grandfather, a member of a Persian family living in Kashmir,
> had studied in Karbala and settled in Khumayn at the invitation of a local
> chief around 1840. While Khomeini was
> still an infant, his father was killed in a dispute with a local landlord,
> leaving Khomeini to be raised by a somewhat more prosperous uncle. His uncle and aunt wished him to become a
> traditional physician (hakim), but he
> showed talent for Islamic learning. World War I having made travel to the Shi`i centers in Iraq impractical,
> he chose to study in the nearby town of Arak, eventually becoming a favored
> student of Shaykh `Abd al-Karim Ha'iri Yazdi (1859–1937).
> 
> Khomeini was fortunate in his choice of
> teacher, for Ha'iri Yazdi moved to Qum in 1922 and led the revival of that town
> as a center of Shi`i learning, becoming its chief religious authority. By the end of the 1930s Khomeini had begun
> teaching the slightly unorthodox disciplines of mysticism and philosophy. In 1930 he married the daughter of a
> prominent cleric of Tehran, Batul Saqafi, whom he adored and by whom he had five
> children. By 1937–38 he was prosperous
> enough to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca and spend several months in the
> shrine cities of Iraq.
> 
> During these years Khomeini had been so
> angered by the secular and anti-clerical policies of Rida Shah Pahlavi that in
> 1944 he published a vitriolic anti-government pamphlet called Kashf al-Asrar, a work that foreshadowed
> his later ideas on Islamic government. He was also influenced by the antisemitic propaganda of the Nazis, which
> left him with an abiding belief in a Jewish conspiracy against Islam.
> 
> When Ayatu'llah Burujirdi (1875–1962) came
> to Qum at the beginning of 1945, Khomeini became his close advisor, carrying
> out religious and political missions on Bururjirdi's behalf that helped secure
> the latter's position as chief religious authority of the Shi`i world. Burujirdi firmly discouraged Khomeini's
> involvement in anti-government politics and terrorism.
> 
> During the 1950s Khomeini turned his
> attention to the problem of becoming a Grand Ayatu'llah—marja` al-taqlid, a
> supreme authority on religious matters. Therefore, he began writing books, this establishing his scholarly
> credentials. His increasing personal
> wealth allowed him to gather a large circle of students. By about 1958 his position as an Ayatu'llah
> of the second rank was secure, but his prospects were limited by the presence
> of a number of more senior Ayatu'llahs, some of whom would surely outlive him
> and thus block his path to promotion. Moreover, his interests lay in philosophy, mysticism, and even poetry—not
> the jurisprudence that was the chief interest of his class. Even three decades later an air of doubt
> still attached to his claim to be a Grand Ayatu'llah.
> 
> In 1962 and 1963 the government introduced
> a number of reforms: large-scale land reforms, women's sufferage, and the
> elimination of religious tests for local offices. The first struck at the independence of the religious
> institutions, which were dependent on their large endowments of rental
> farmland, while the latter two were seen by the clergy as anti-Islamic. Large demonstrations took place throughout
> the country. Khomeini took a leading
> role in agitating against the measures, speaking against the Shah in bold and
> abusive language. The protests reached
> their height in 1963 at `Ashura, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Husayn,
> which fell that year at the beginning of June. By the time troops had restored order, hundreds were dead. Khomeini, along with other clerical leaders
> of the protests, was arrested and brought to Tehran where he was held for ten
> months before being released in April 1964. His preaching remained defiant. That November he was arrested again for his opposition to a bill
> removing American military personnel from the jurisdiction of the Iranian
> courts. He was exiled to Turkey. The following year he settled in Najaf, the
> chief Shi`i scholarly center of Iraq, where he lived until 1978.
> 
> Thought and writings
> 
> Khomeini's intellectual
> importance rests on his theory of Islamic government, a subject on which he
> disagreed with the majority of modern Shi`i clerics. Traditionally, Shi`is accepted the separation of church and state
> in the absence of the Hidden Imam. Khomeini argued that many of the fundamental laws of Islam presumed the
> existence of an Islamic government. Also, people are weak and, for the most part, will fall into sin without
> the influence of a government to enforce religious law. In our time Islamic states had fallen into
> the hands of those who served the purposes of non-Muslim imperialists. Khomeini painted a stark picture of the
> division of society into a tiny minority of rich and corrupt oppressors
> exploiting the mass of oppressed Muslims. The solution was to establish true Islamic governments. The proper leaders for such governments were
> the Islamic clergy because of their knowledge of divine law and their
> commitment to justice. This last is the
> famous doctrine of the "guardianship of the jurisconsult" (vilayat-i faqih). Khomeini
> presented this message in books, pamphlets, and fiery sermons smuggled into
> Iran on casettes.
> 
> Though Khomeini's scholarly output was much
> less than that of other Grand Ayatu'llahs, he did write a number of books. These were:
> 
> Tahrir
> al-Wasila and Tawdih al-Masa'il, manuals on ritual obligations of the
> sort conventionally written by Grand Ayatu'llahs.
> 
> Kitab
> al-Bay`, a treatise on the law of
> contracts that provided a vehicle for his denial of the legitimacy of the
> secular state.
> 
> Islamic
> Government (Hukumat-i Islami), a compilation of his lectures on government,
> his most influential work.
> 
> Misbah
> al-Hidayat, on mystical philosophy.
> 
> To this must be added his Last Will and
> Testament, written in 1983 and constituting his political testament.
> 
> There are also a number of collections of
> speeches, letters, and the like.
> 
> Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution
> 
> While in Najaf Khomeini developed his theory of Islamic
> government and built up a loose revolutionary network within Iran. Eventually his uncompromising opposition to
> the Shah's regime won him support from other anti-government groups, who hoped
> to use him for their own purposes. Early in 1978 riots broke out in major Iranian cities, resulting in many
> deaths. Riots continued through the summer
> and fall, encouraged by Khomeini's network of supporters. Expelled from Iraq in October, Khomeini
> settled in Paris, by now the recognized leader of the revolution. After the Shah's departure from Iran,
> Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph on 31 January and within days was the
> unquestioned ruler of the country though he himself held no government post.
> 
> Khomeini moved quickly to consolidate his
> Islamic regime by executing many leaders of the old government. By consistently supporting the most radical
> elements of the revolution, he was able to maintain his own position and eliminate
> other elements of the revolutionary coalition, such as Marxists, secular
> nationalists, and even rival Ayatu'llahs. Though various political groups coalesced out of the clerical coalition
> that had brought him to power, Khomeini retained supreme control, able to
> frustrate policies that he objected to. Under his authority Iran pursued a xenophobic foreign policy, resulting
> in disasters such as American hostage crisis, the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, and
> the American economic embargo. His
> major foreign policy success was that under him and his successors, Iran for
> the first time in several centuries had a government that was not under the
> influence of one or more powerful Western states. Since Khomeini's program was primarily religious and moral,
> devoted to the moral and spiritual reform of Islamic society, he had few
> concrete economic and political programs, apart from a generalized hostility
> towards the West.
> 
> In the last years of his life, he was
> rumored to be ill. In any case, he
> played little role in day-to-day affairs, living in seculsion in a heavily
> fortified village near Tehran. Nonetheless, he retained the capacity to intervene in affairs if he
> chose, as his condemnation of the British author Salman Rushdie in 1989
> proved. He died of complications
> following surgery on 4 June 1989 in Tehran.
> 
> Khomeini and the Bahá'ís
> 
> Khomeini shared the
> distaste of many (though not all) Shi`i clerics for Bahá'ís. His first contact with Bahá'ís was evidently
> in Simnan in 1930, where he tried to organize an anti-Bahá'í meeting. Later his hatred for Bahá'ís, Jews, and the
> Pahlavi regime coalesced, convincing him that the three groups were in league
> to destroy Islam. Thus Khomeini supported
> the anti-Bahá'í pogroms of the 1950s and in 1963 accused the government of
> using local government reforms as a device to favor the Bahá'ís.
> 
> After his return to Iran in 1979 Khomeini
> refused to include Bahá'ís among the religious minorities protected by the
> Islamic regime. There can be little
> doubt that the persecutions of the Bahá'ís in Iran under the Islamic regime
> were conducted with the consent of Khomeini, though they were generally
> initiated by particular groups within the revolutionary coalition and carried
> out by lower-level officials.
> 
> Note: Almost every book
> published about the Iranian Revolution deals with Khomeini at length. An imperfect and generally hostile biography
> is Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah
> (Bethesda: Adler & Adler, 1986). A
> study of the development of his intellectual views is found in Hamid Dabashi, Theology of Discontent (New York: NYU
> Press, 1993), ch. 8 and passim. Khomeini's works have been zealously published in Iran since the
> revolution though some post hoc editing has taken place. A representative sample by a good scholar is
> Islam and Revolution: Writings and
> Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. Hamid Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press,
> 1981). There are many translations of
> varying quality produced by or on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views12995 views since posted 2011-06-01; last edit 2025-06-02 18:03 UTC;
> 
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